Strange problem w/ Explorer

I've got a strange problem with Windows Explorer that just came up a few days ago (WinXP SP2). The Folders side of the Explorer bar is blank. This is the column listing of directories in the left hand plane. When I go to "View->Explorer Bar", folders is checked but theres nothing on the left side. Other bars like search, favorites and history still work, but not folders. The right side pane still works fine, I can go to view contents of directories, I just can't see them on the left.

I would hate to reinstall, I hope some guru out there can tell me what's wrong. TIA!

thats very strange. never heard of that before. did you try windows update?

OfficerJack,

This may seem a stupid question, but are you sure your in Win Explorer? I've seen something like what you describe and, you are actually in Explorer, but not the most useful version (the folder pane is missing).

To access Explorer I right click on the Start button and then left click on Explore. Is that how you are accessing it?

Lastly. Can you provide a screenshot?

Things like this have happened to me b4. Usually it means windows files are corrupt. You can do a reinstall of just the windows files. When you do a restore just make sure you don't choose destructive restore.

Here is a picture of what I have, you can see that folders is checked:


@ min:
Yes, I've tried to access explorer a dozen different ways and it's all the same. What happened is, one day I had trouble with my 56k dialup freezing and I decided to close some processes using taskmanager. Unfortunately I closed the user process explorer by accident. I freaked out because my desktop went blank(!!!) so I did a file->new task->run explorer and the desktop came back. Well this fixed the freeze and I thought I had found a good fix, until the folders pane went south. It may have just been a coincidence, but probably not.

@ Epc525:
I've never thought of a non-destructive restore before because I didn't know it was possible! How do you do that? (I have tried a System Restore to a previous restore point but that didn't help.) I haven't wanted to restore, because frankly I have a lot of programs invested in this installation and I didn't want to reinstall everything. This comp. has been running fine since Jan '04, but maybe it's time to clean house.

System restore blow, all it does is take a snapshot of your registry and restore it.

On another note, the non destructive recovery depends on your machine. anything other then dell should have a built in recovery partition. usually the D: drive. Just boot into the recovery partition and DONT choose destructive recovery (the destructive recovery option is under advanced options normally). This low level recovery will just delete all windows files and restore them.

OfficerJack,

Well, I haven't run into that screen of Explorer before. What happens when you click on the X for the left pane to get rid of it, and then restore it?

One thing I do know though. You are NEVER supposed to use Taskmanager to turn off system processes. Right at this moment I can't remember the command but I will find it shortly and let you know what it is. You could go back in and start turning processes on (probably one at a time) to see if the pane comes back but that would take quite a while.

It seems to me that (since you haven't done a reformat in about 3 years, this may be a good time for one.

OfficerJack,

OK, just remembered. Any time you want to turn any services on/off, use this procedure.

Click on Start, then Run. Then type in services.msc You can safely turn any service on/off from there. Just make sure you know what your doing in there as you can run into problems such as your currently experiencing. Black Viper used to have a really good explanation of the process but I don't know if he's back online yet but I'll check.

OK, check these sites out. I believe they're mirrors of the info that Black Viper had online.

http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=12
http://www.dead-eye.net/WinXP Services.htm
http://www.digg.com/software/Black_V...uration_Mirror

Just remember to note what you turn off as, sometimes, if you turn something off it can have strange consequences. Sound familiar?

Just checked, and he's finally back. Check out Black Viper's site:

http://www.blackviper.com/

Good luck.

Yea I recommend a clean restore about every year

Blackviper - great site Min! Thanks a lot.

I may reorganize my whole computer. It has been acting kinda flaky lately. The mobo is an ASUS P4C800 and I am booting up on a raid array of 2-120Gb SATA hard drives (raid 0 ) which kinda blows because the pagefile is also on these drives, and I think that's not recommended, it can get split between drives. And also the Promise hardware that powers it loads after the IDE drives in the BIOS because they're in their own seperate port so my boot drive is kind of an afterthought. A lot of software doesn't detect the SATA as having an interrupt! I'm going to get another IDE drive and reinstall. Hell, summer's coming and I don't have much to do. <Sigh>

OfficerJack,

I've really liked (and have used) BlackViper's site for quite a few years now and his info has always proven pretty darn good. I'd give him a 9 out of 10 for his info.

It sounds like your setup is OK but I do agree that an IDE (for the most part) is a good way to go for the boot drive. For the most part, when I set up a machine, I usually just stick in a small 10 GB or 20 GB HD for the boot and then set up one SATA for files and the second as a backup. If the client is running an app that needs it (Photoshop), I'll stick the pagefile on D:\ and/or E:\.

Lastly, I've generally found it useful to reformat at least once a year. But I'm a real stickler for what I expect the machine to do.